Students have many elective choices when it comes to planning their class schedules at SRHS and a lot of those elective choices have something to do with art. SRHS has lots of different choices of expression and ceramics class is one of them.
Ceramics and pottery are two different things. Ceramics is where students do everything by hand and pottery is where students can make things on a wheel, but they are both made out of clay and have to be fired in something called a kiln. A kiln is like a big oven that can get to a temperature of 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. There is a whole process to making a piece of pottery and it includes quite a few steps.
“There are so many steps to making a piece of pottery. It takes about three days. You have to shape your piece and once that’s finished you have to wait for it to dry out for 24 hours. Once that is completed it goes into the kiln where it will fire and completely set and turn into a glass like texture. Once that is complete you have to wait for it to cool off again which will take another 24-48 hours depending on the piece. Then you paint. You have to use a special kind of paint. For a single piece you have to use a minimum of three layers. Then back into the kiln it goes. After another 24 hours of cooling you have your piece,” Treyvn Peltier, sophomore, stated.
That is a lot of steps to make a single piece of pottery. There is a lot of work that goes into making this kind of art.
“I really enjoy making my artwork. Though it takes a lot of time and effort, the end result is always worth it. My favorite part of ceramics is painting and seeing the final result of my art,” Alina Pavlovich, sophomore, stated.
Though ceramics take a long time to make students seem to really enjoy the class and the environment of it all. Students can make pieces and express themselves through those pieces of work. They have free range to do what they would like as long as it’s school appropriate.
“When I was put into ceramics I didn’t want to be in the class. I was put in there at random. I thought that it was going to be boring and uninteresting, that we were all going to make the same thing. But I was wrong. I was able to freely express myself through my art and enjoy the class, Natalie Franco, sophomore, stated.
Trying out new things can be a challenging thing to do especially when students walk into a class thinking that this is already going to suck, but students should give new things a try. The worst thing that can happen is you don’t like it, and students don’t have to take that class again next year.
But if students do enjoy the class then they are able to find something new that they like doing and that makes them happy. Students should never be afraid to try out new things or new classes.
